


My Heart

by DKNC



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Ned survives King's Landing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 22:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DKNC/pseuds/DKNC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long time ago, I was asked for a fic in which Ned somehow survives King's Landing, but the Red Wedding takes place, and Catelyn becomes Lady Stoneheart. This is not a happy story. Please don't anyone ever ask me to write Lady Stoneheart again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart

“Gods be good! It cannot be you! You are dead!”

Eddard Stark barely reacted to the woman’s words. Shock or disbelief were the standard reactions to his name whenever he chose to give it, and he was well beyond caring about either. Justice was all he cared for now. And vengeance.

He did react to the woman’s appearance, however. She was enormous, easily taller than he was and quite mannish in her build. Her voice was obviously a woman’s, however, and the distress he’d seen in her eyes when she’d spied the Kingslayer’s body at his feet had been obviously feminine as well.

“Obviously, I am not,” he said coldly. “I have given you my name, my . . .lady, but you have not yet given me yours.”

“I . . .I am Brienne of Tarth,” she stammered after a moment, her eyes moving back and forth between his and the dead body on the ground. “You . . .you killed him? Ser Jaime, I mean?”

“He is dead, is he not?” Ned sighed tiredly. “I had more than ample reason, I assure you.” He raised the small sword that felt like little more than a dagger in his hand, the blade that was not Ice. “If you belong to him and mean to have vengeance for his death, then raise your weapon for I will fight you.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and Ned considered what she saw--a man who had become old and nearly skeletally thin during his long moons of captivity, of hiding, and of running. A man who obviously stood in a manner to keep nearly all his weight on the leg which wasn’t twisted and scarred. She could likely kill him. The Kingslayer certainly would have, had he not been missing a sword hand and struck momentarily senseless by finding himself face to face with a spectre.

“I do not belong to Ser Jaime,” the woman said after a moment. “I swore my blade to . . .another.” She continued to stare hard at him. “In fact, I was bid to bring back Ser Jaime’s head.”

Ned raised his brows. He had no practice in reading a woman’s face in a very long time, but he did not think this woman looked upon the Kingslayer as one looked upon an enemy. “Take it,” he said. “I have no need of his head. It is enough to know that his murderous heart no longer beats.”

Realizing that whatever her purpose was here, she did not mean to attack him, he turned away from her. His horse was hidden nearby, and he needed to be gone. Whether the big Tarth woman was aware of it or not, Ned knew that the Kingslayer had a fair number of men nearby. He had lured Lannister far from them so as to kill him quietly, but they would be looking for him soon, and Ned would prefer to reach the Twins before he was caught and killed himself. He had business there.

“Don’t go,” the woman said suddenly. “You should come with us.”

He turned back toward her. _Us?_ He saw no one else, but she could have men concealed among the trees. “You mean to take me prisoner?”

“There is someone who will want to see you.” She pursed her lips and her eyes looked troubled. “I cannot say more at the present. But I am sworn to one who would see all Lannisters, Boltons, and Freys dead. Is that good enough for you?”

“The Boltons have my younger daughter.” The words pained Ned even as he said them. Arya was the only child who remained to him. Catelyn and all the others were dead. Sansa must be dead. No one had heard anything of her since Joffrey Baratheon’s death. And wild little Arya had been given like a whore to Roose Bolton’s foul bastard. Ned’s felt the icy knife of hatred in his heart at the thought of it.

“No,” the woman said, almost kindly. “I do not know where the Lady Arya is, or even if she lives. But I do know the girl given to Lord Bolton for his son is not her, but an imposter.”

Something that felt almost like hope flared momentarily in Ned’s cold heart, but it died immediately. “Then she is dead. Like all the others,” he muttered.

“I do not believe she is dead,” the big woman insisted. “And I am almost certain the Lady Sansa is not. I seek your daughters, my lord. I am sworn to find them, and I intend to do so.” She looked down at the corpse once more. “But I was . . .given the task to . . .find Ser Jaime.”

“By whom?”

She looked away. “You should come with us,” she repeated stubbornly, not answering his question. She gave a low whistle then, and several men appeared around them, stepping out of the trees like ghosts. _I am the ghost,_ Ned thought.

Realizing he could likely not fight one of them, let alone all of them, he nodded.

They allowed him to get his horse, and as they rode through the forests of the Riverlands, he deflected questions about how he had escaped the Lannisters and where he had been for so long. In truth, he didn’t know many of the answers. He had spent most of the time during his imprisonment and supposed execution out of his head first from fever and then from drugs. When he had been lucid enough to ask questions, he had asked not about himself, but about Catelyn. About the children. At first no one gave him any answers. That had been torture. Then once he’d managed his freedom, he’d gradually found his answers. That had been worse. Bran and Rickon murdered by the Greyjoy, their heads mounted upon his own castle gate. Catelyn and Robb betrayed and murdered by the Freys and Boltons, who now accepted rewards from the cursed Lannisters for desecrating his firstborn’s body and casting his beautiful, brave wife into the river like so much garbage. His daughters both forced into vile marriages, or so he’d thought. At the very least, both were missing and likely dead. _I am sworn to find them,_ the big woman had said. _No!_ He would not allow himself any hope. Down that road lay only madness. Hope was folly. There was only justice. Only vengeance. But if this lady soldier’s lord truly hunted Lannisters, Boltons, and Freys, perhaps he could make common cause with him for a time.

They traveled a great distance. The woman seemed to intentionally avoid conversation with him, and the men spoke less and less as they realized he had no interest in answering their questions. He didn’t ask them any questions. In truth, he had no interest in them. The utter destruction of his family and his House had made him hard, and other men were now to him little more than a means to an end. He wished no ill upon this woman and her companions, but he had no desire to befriend them, either. They stayed off the roads, but he knew the area well enough to recognize that they traveled now in woods west of the Kingsroad, following the general direction of the River Road toward Riverrun. _Catelyn’s home. Held by the Lannisters and Freys._

Early one morning, they spied a group of men riding toward them, and the Tarth woman rode out to meet them. Ned saw her converse with them and then leave with them, riding back the way the men had come, the pouch that held the grisly trophy Ned had provided her hanging from her saddle. One of the newcomers did not depart, however, instead riding toward the men accompanying Ned.

“Where is he?” the man asked sharply as he approached, and Ned was startled to hear a Northern cadence to his speech. He stared hard at the man, and recognition struck him like a bolt.

“Harwin!” he cried, the name coming from some deep place within him still capable of remembering the man he once was, the man who cared for so many people in his life.

The younger man gave a strangled sort of shout, nearly falling off his own horse and running to Ned’s, falling down upon his knees on the ground before it. “My lord! I did not believe the wench! It is you! Gods be good! It is you!”

“He truly is Eddard Stark?” one of the men who’d come with Ned and the Tarth woman said. “He’s our lady’s dead . . .”

“Hush, man!” Harwin commanded. “Of course, he’s Lord Eddard. I lived at Winterfell all my life, didn’t I? I know my own liege lord!”

“He ain’t yer lord now, Harwin!” another man shouted. “You swore to Lord Beric. And then to . . .”

“Hush, I say!” Harwin said sharply. “Lord Eddard is alive.” He got to his feet and looked up at Ned upon the horse. “You are alive, my lord,” he said in a tone of hushed awe. “And I am your man.”

“You know we’ve got to take him to the Lady, Harwin. It’s up to her what’s to be done with him,” the second man who’d spoken said now.

Harwin shot him a glowering look and then turned back to Ned. “We will take you the Lady, my lord,” he said, and Ned heard an odd, pained note in his voice.

“By all means,” he said. “I have already told your Lady Brienne I would follow her where she was going.”

Harwin swallowed. “I don’t mean the sword wench,” he said roughly before turning away to get back on his own horse.

Ned pulled his mount alongside Harwin’s as they rode, finding himself truly curious about someone else’s wellbeing for the first time in a long time. “You rode out with Lord Beric, Harwin. What happened?”

“Bad happened,” the younger man said darkly, looking straight ahead. “It was a trap, my lord. We were nearly all killed.”

“Lord Beric?”

“He survived. He took what was left of us and then others who joined us and we made our own Brotherhood. We tried to stand against all the bad, but there’s so much bad, my lord. It’s hard to know what’s not bad anymore.” He shook his head, and Ned thought he looked twenty years older than when he’d seen him last.

“Lord Beric still leads you then?”

Harwin shook his head. “He’s dead now. For good. The Lady leads us now.”

 _For good? What the devil did that mean?_ “What lady, Harwin?” he asked.

Harwin closed his mouth tightly and shook his head. “Ask the red priest about it, my lord,” he said, still refusing to meet Ned’s eyes. “I don’t understand it all. I never did. And . . .I’m sorry, my lord. I truly am.”

He kicked his horse and rode ahead, leaving Ned feeling unsettled and vaguely frightened.

Not long after that troubling conversation, men approached them on foot, seeming to appear from the trees themselves, and everyone dismounted, including Ned. He was blindfolded then, and led along by two men. Harwin was not one of them. He felt a sudden drop in the temperature and realized his feet trod upon stone rather than forest floor.

“We are in a cave of some sort,” he said to the silent men who held his arms.

“You are observant, Lord Stark, in spite of your blindfold. Would that you had seen as clearly back in King’s Landing.”

It was neither of his guides who responded, but a new voice from somewhere ahead of him, a spectral, haunted sounding voice, which still managed to sound familiar.

“Remove his blindfold.”

Ned blinked as the cloth was removed from his face, allowing his eyes to adjust to the torchlight. Slowly, he made out the features of the man who stood before him. He remembered him as fat and bald, and he was neither of those things now, but still he knew the man.

“Thoros,” he breathed.

“You recognize me,” the priest responded. 

“I do. Harwin tells me I have been brought to see a Lady. He told me to ask you about her.”

The man’s face clouded. “I suppose I should be the one to tell you, although it was not my doing. Harwin begged for the gift for her, and Lord Beric himself gave it when I refused, though it cost him his life.”

“What?” The man made no sense, and Ned had no patience.

Thoros sighed. “I serve R’hllor. You know this. I was a shallow man. A drunkard scarcely deserving of the title of priest to the Lord of Light. Why he chose to work his gift through me, I do not know. But he did. Lord Beric was slain when we were overrun by the Mountain’s men, but his breath returned to him when I kissed his lifeless body. After that, he was slain many more times, and always the Lord of Light returned his life to him with my kiss, and he continued to lead our Brotherhood.

Ned stared at the man, wondering if he’d taken leave of his senses.

“Death changes a person,” the priest continued. “Lord Beric began to lose himself more and more until he was little more than an echo of himself the last time he returned. I do not believe he wanted to return again.” He shook his head. “But she had been dead too long. I knew it was folly. He should not have been moved by Harwin’s pleas or the guilt that plagued him from the promise he could not keep to Lady Arya.”

“Arya?” Ned exclaimed, startled. “What does my daughter have to do with your ghost tale?”

“She was with us for a brief time,” Thoros said. “We meant to return her to her mother. But she escaped us. And then . . .the Red Wedding.”

 _The Red Wedding. The Red Wedding._ Ned hated those words. _The Red Wedding. The massacre, you mean! Call it what it was. The murder of my wife, my son, my men. Cat is gone and Robb is gone._ He forced his mind from that abomination to focus on the man’s other words. _She was with us for a brief time._

“Arya is alive?” he demanded. “You had her here? She’s alive?” The hope he fought so hard to keep cold and dead sprang to life once more within him. “Tell me of her!”

He realized the man was still speaking of death and coming back to life and some woman too long dead. “Tell me of my daughter, man!” he demanded. “I’ve no time for your stories. I do not believe in such things!”

Thoros stopped speaking and turned to look briefly at an opening into another chamber before turning back to Ned. “I am afraid you will believe in them very soon, Lord Stark,” he said sadly.

Ned looked at the opening Thoros had glanced at to see Harwin and a man in a yellow cloak leading Lady Brienne of Tarth rather roughly through it back into this chamber. The woman’s eyes were wet and her face was pale.

“The Lady says she can go,” the man in the yellow cloak said. He sounded disappointed.

“And my companions as well,” the woman said. Her voice was thick with just barely contained tears.

Harwin nodded as the other man snorted in disgust, and Thoros turned to two other men who stood nearby. “Free Hunt and the boy. Blindfold the three of them and take them to the road. Give them horses and bid them be gone.”

“Wait,” Ned said, looking at Lady Brienne in some confusion. “You are not with these men? You have been their prisoner? I thought you were sworn to one here. Sworn to find my daughters.”

The big woman sadly shook his head. “I am sworn to someone,” she said. “And I will find your daughters, Lord Stark, or die trying. My lady deserves that.” She swallowed. “But . . .she . . .” She turned her eyes toward the other chamber, and they filled with tears that actually began to spill over. “She is not my lady. Not truly. Not anymore.” She looked back toward Ned. “I am sorry, my lord.”

Without another word, the tall woman turned away from him and nearly fled through the entrance behind him, followed by the two men Thoros had commanded to free her companions.

“I don’t understand,” Ned started to say, turning toward Thoros.

“The Lady will see you now, Lord Stark,” the man in yellow said rather nastily. “We don’t keep the Lady waiting.

Ned looked quickly to Harwin, but Harwin just as quickly looked down at the ground.

“Very well,” Ned said. “I would be most pleased to meet your lady.” He spoke with great courtesy but no warmth. Something was wrong here, and he could not quite put a finger on what it was. He wished to be finished with this meeting and move on. He had Freys to kill. There were still Lannisters in the world. Roose Bolton’s bastard sat in Wintefell with a girl who may or may not be Arya warming his bed.

“The night is dark,” Thoros intoned as Ned strode toward the entrance Brienne, Harwin, and Yellow-Cloak had come from.

“And full of terrors,” responded everyone in the room other than Ned. It gave him chills. 

The chamber through that doorway was nearly as large as the one he had come from, but it was empty save for trestle table laid near the center. On that table lay Jaime Lannister’s head, its dead eyes staring up at him garishly. Behind the table sat a single figure, a woman all in grey with her head completely covered by the hood of her cloak and her face in shadows. Her hands rested on the table, holding an object, restlessly running long fingers over it. With a start, Ned realized it was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords, a crown patterned after the crowns of the Northern kings of old.

“My lady?” he said softly. “You wished to see me?”

His words were met by a sharp intake of breath. It was a ragged, rattling, wrong-sounding breath, and it clearly spoke of both shock and recognition.

“My lady?” he repeated. “Do you know me?”

The crown fell from her fingers onto the table with a soft thud, and her hands went to pull her hood even further down over her face. One of her hands went to her hood, anyway. The other went inside her hood and appeared to clutch at her throat. She made a hissing sort of sound.

He took a step toward her. “Forgive me, my lady, I did not understand you. I fear my appearance startles people as I am not as dead as they had either feared or hoped.”

She let go of her hood and held that hand out in front of her in a gesture that clearly meant stop. Her skin was the palest he’d ever seen, but not the clear, lovely milky white his lady wife’s had been--a sickly grayish color--a corpse color. He shuddered. The woman’s fingers were long and tapered though, as his own Cat’s had been, and he thought she might have had lovely hands once.

Her other hand remained at her throat, and she hissed again. This time, he made out a word. “Go!”

“My lady!”

“Go!” she hissed more loudly and clearly. She shook her head at him and he saw a few wisps of hair fall forward over one shoulder--white hair, the color of old snow, but as brittle as straw. She must be very old.

“The lady told you to go,” the yellow cloaked man said sharply, grabbing from behind and spinning him around. Ned had not even heard him or Harwin enter the chamber behind him.

“Don’t grab him like that, Lem!” Harwin protested. “Let me walk you out, Lord Stark,” he said to Ned, his voice sounding almost as thick as the Tarth woman’s had before.

At the sound of his name, Ned heard another sharp breath from the woman at the table, one that sounded almost like a sob, and just as they urged him through the exit, he heard another hissed word, but this time it wasn’t “go.” He was certain he heard the word “Ned.”

He was walking toward Thoros of Myr, wondering what exactly had just happened, looking at the man’s haunted eyes when he suddenly remembered the other striking feature of the woman’s hand. She’d had a deep scar all the way across the palm just at the base of the fingers. Just like Catelyn had had, when he’d seen her that last time in King’s Landing. Just like Catelyn . . .”

The dark cavern chamber seemed to spin around him, and he stumbled. The leg Jaime Lannister had all but taken from him in King’s Landing buckled and he fell to the floor. “Cat . . .” he whispered. Then it was dark.

He awoke unable to see. “Cat!” he cried out, not fully understanding why her name was on his lips.

“Peace, Lord Stark,” came a voice from the darkness. “You aren’t hurt.”

“I can’t see,” he said stupidly. 

He heard the sound of flint being struck and then a small candle blazed into life casting a red glow in what appeared to be a very small stone and earth chamber. He lay on a pallet on the floor, and Thoros of Myr sat before him holding a candle. “I have found the nights to be full of terror whether we attempt to light them or not,” the man said in a hollow voice. “I have made my peace with the dark and forget that others still look for light.”

Ned swallowed and licked his dry lips. The priest handed him a flask of water, and he drank deeply. “She’s dead,” he croaked after he swallowed the last of the liquid. “They killed her at the Twins. They threw her in the river. They . . .” His voice was hoarse, and his mind was cloudy--his memory filled with the terrible image of the woman at that table, the corpse-like woman with his wife’s hand.

“Aye,” Thoros said simply. “They did all those things to her, Lord Stark. She’d been in the river three days when we found her. The river was choked with corpses and some had been thrown back upon the bank. Some had been dragged by animals. Wolves and other creatures had been at most of them.” The man took note of Ned’s horrified expression. “Not her, though, for some reason. She was dead all right, bloated and grey like all the others, but she looked almost as if she’d been laid there with care rather than dragged out to be gnawed at for meat.”

Ned sat fully up then and vomited the water he had just drunk onto the ground. “How . . .why?” he gasped.

“Your Winterfell man found her,” Thoros said. “Her throat was cut clear to the bone. That’s what killed her. Her face was all cut to ribbons, too, although that wasn’t animals. Like I said, the wolves hadn’t touched her even though all the bodies around were half devoured by the time we got there. No. Whatever cut up her face, it happened while she was still alive. Your man, Harwin, he just fell down beside her and cried and begged me to bring her back like I had Lord Beric. He said she didn’t deserve such a death. I couldn’t argue with that, but I told him it had been too long. It wasn’t right. She didn’t deserve such a life as I could give her, either, for it would be worse.”

Thoros had looked at him all this time, but now he looked away. “Lord Beric came upon us then. He looked down at the lady’s body and covered it up with his cloak. He looked at me and said she deserved justice and that he couldn’t remember what it was anymore. Then he looked down at her again and said that maybe she would remember, and he knelt down and kissed her.” He closed his eyes tightly. “And god help us, she opened her eyes. And she rose. Lord Beric poured his life into her, and she rose.”

Ned’s heart pounded in his chest. “She is truly alive then? My wife . . .she truly lives?” The hope was almost impossible to keep cold and dead now in spite of the terror that accompanied it.

Thoros turned back toward him. “Your wife is dead,” he said sharply. “You should leave here and mourn her. Find your daughters, perhaps. There are rumors that they live.”

“But you said . . .”

“Lady Stoneheart is not your wife, Lord Stark.”

“Lady . . .Stoneheart?”

“It is the name most frequently given to her, and the one she seems to favor the most. Inasmuch as anyone can tell what she truly favors. She has others. Mother Merciless, the Silent Sister, the Hangwoman.”

 _No,_ Ned thought. _These are not names for Catelyn. These are all wrong._

As if he had read his mind, Thoros continued. “One name no one calls her is Lady Catelyn Stark.”

“But . . .”

“She is not your wife, Lord Stark,” Thoros said more softly, almost pityingly. “She once was. In another life. But whatever she is now, it is not the woman you knew. She remembers you, and she doesn’t remember much other than what was done to her children, so I know she must have cared for you once. She doesn’t remember much of what she was, I don’t think, but she remembers enough to know that you do not belong here with whatever she is now. She wants you to go.”

“I can’t go, Thoros,” Ned said. “I cannot simply leave my wife. Whatever has been done to her, however she has been hurt, whatever has become of her . . .mind, I will not abandon her.”

The priest sighed. “That choice is not yours, Lord Stark. She will not have you harmed, but she will have you gone. You will be blindfolded and taken away from here when it’s light. You are not to return. If you attempt to find us again, we will kill you.”

“Catelyn would never . . .”

“No. Your Catelyn would never, and interestingly enough, I don’t believe our Lady Stoneheart would sanction your death even if you disobeyed her, either. But she needn’t know about it. I shall try to do as she asks, Lord Stark. For better or worse, we are hers to command now. But I will see you gone from here as she wishes.”

He sighed and stood up. “Try to rest, Lord Stark. I wish Lady Brienne had never brought you here. There is nothing here for you except grief.” He shook his head. “There is nothing here for anyone except grief.” Then he was gone.

Two men stood guard outside his chamber, so Ned had no chance of escaping it. He was not leaving this place without Catelyn, though. He had made his mind up on that point. They would have to kill him in order to remove him without her.

Harwin came to him with food some time later. There was no light in this cavern save from candles and lanterns, so Ned did not know whether it was day or night. He only knew he hadn’t slept.

“Take me to my lady wife, Harwin,” he said immediately.

Harwin shook his head. “I cannot do that, my lord,” he said sadly.

“You told me you were my man.”

Harwin nodded miserably. “And I am. But I cannot defy Lady Stoneheart here. And I cannot come with you, my lord, or she’ll have no one of the North here with her. And it’s my fault that . . .”

Ned shook his head. “Whatever you asked for her, you asked it for love and loyalty, Harwin. I know that. But do not call her that terrible name, and help me get her away from these men.”

Harwin looked miserable. “You don’t understand, my lord!” he said desperately. “Lady Catelyn is gone! I used to try and find her. To get her to remember . . .but I can’t. She’s gone! She’s only Lady Stoneheart. I will stay here and I will serve her because she was Lady Catelyn and it’s my fault she isn’t now, and she needs me. But you have to go. It will only make her angry if you stay.”

“You think she’ll have me killed, Harwin?” Ned asked, raising his brow.

Harwin shook his head slowly. “I . . .I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe not you. She did know you. And she let that big wench go once she brought the Kingslayer’s head back. But she’ll get angry. And when Lady Stoneheart is angry, people do die. It doesn’t even matter who they are, my lord. Not really.”

Ned felt sick and thought he might vomit again. _What have they done to you, my love?_

“I have to see her at least, Harwin. Surely, you can help me do that. I would like to speak to her--just the two of us. Just once. I am not afraid of her for myself. And even if she is truly as murderous as all say, what life could I live if I walked away from here knowing myself a man without courage or honor enough to take proper leave of my own lady wife?” He looked hard at the man he known since childhood. “You know me better than that, Harwin.”

After a moment, Harwin nodded. “It’s still dark, my lord. The Lady doesn’t sleep, and she likes to walk outside the cavern in the woods by herself when it’s dark. Mayhap we can find her.”

A simple word from Harwin that the Lady had summoned him got Ned past his guards with no questions. “I understand her better than anyone else,” Harwin said simply when they had reached the outer entrance of the cave system. “So people always believe I speak for her. She couldn’t talk at all at first because the filthy Freys cut her throat so deep. But she learned to squeeze the flesh of her throat tight together with her hand and she can sort of make words, even though it’s hard for her.”

He spoke the words matter of factly, and that somehow made them even more terrible to Ned’s ears. After they had walked a short way into a thickly wooded area, Harwin pointed. “That’s where she normally goes,” he whispered. “It’s funny, really, because there’s weirwoods there, and Lady Catelyn never liked the godswood at Winterfell much, but she’s always by the weirwoods here.”

Ned nodded. “Go on then, Harwin. I’ll see her alone.”

“But what if you can’t understand her, my lord?”

Ned gave him a cold look. He would bloody well be able to understand his own wife. “I will not have her angry at you for bringing me here,” he said simply.

Harwin nodded and turned back toward the cavern. “I’ll wait at the entrance,” he said simply.

Ned saw her when he was about twenty paces from her. He was surprised she hadn’t turned around as his uneven gait made his footfalls anything but silent, but she knelt before a white barked weirwood as if lost to this world entirely.

“Catelyn,” he said softly.

She made no response, so he walked several steps closer. “Cat. It’s Ned. I am here, my love.”

There was a sharp intake of breath and her hands went up to her throat. “No!” came the hiss.

“Yes,” he said. “I will not leave you, Cat, whether you order me or not.”

She shook her head violently, still on her knees and with her back to him. “Not. Cat. Not. Love.” Each word came out as if it were being painfully ripped from her throat. But he understood each of them. And he understood what she meant.

“But you are,” he said. “It matters not what has been done to you. Or what you have done. You are my wife, Catelyn.”

Her shoulders began to shake and he realized the sounds she was making now were sobs. He rushed to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Cat . . .” he said, but she recoiled from his touch.

Faster than he would have thought possible, she got to her feet and ran further away from him before turning to face him. He still could see nothing of her face because of her hood. “Dead,” she hissed. “Robb. Dead. Bran. Dead. Rickon. Dead. You. . . . Dead?”

“Oh, my love,” he said. “I was never dead although you were meant to think so. I thought I was dead myself for so long. And then all I wanted was to get back to you. To the children. To Winterfell. And I couldn’t, Cat. No matter how desperately I tried, I couldn’t get to you. And then, you were all dead. And I did die then. All the best of me died.”

She raised her head to look at him then, and he could see just a bit of the lower part of her face. Even in the dark, he could tell that the flesh there was the same terrible color as her that on her hands. He walked toward her very slowly. “I don’t want to live in a world without you and the children, Cat.”

“Stop.”

He wasn’t certain if her words were getting clearer or if he was simply getting better at understanding them. “I can’t stop,” he said simply. “I am your husband.”

“No.”

He took another step toward her. “I will not leave you, Cat.”

“Not Cat.”

He took another step and reached out his arms once more very slowly to touch her. “You are to me. You will always be Cat to me, my love. You told me to call you so on our wedding night when you were a stranger to me. So, I shall call you that now, even if you believe yourself a stranger to me once more.”

“No.” But she didn’t pull away from his touch this time, and so he ran his hands down the length of her arms and held her hands up between them, palms upward.

“See?” he said. “These are the marks you got defending our son. They are beautiful and brave to me, like you.”

She made a terrible choking sobbing sound and jerked her hands away. “Not!” she hissed, almost managing to shout it. “Not! Beautiful!” The word beautiful was somewhat garbled, but it was clear enough to be understood.

“To me, you are. Always,” he said softly.

“No!” she hissed. And then almost angrily, she threw back the hood and stood there before him, blue eyes blazing up at him with fury and challenge, her pupils large in the darkness--reflecting the moonlight with a red shine.

Her hair struck him first. The sight of it was like a physical blow. It was half gone, entire chunks of her scalp visible where once a thick soft copper blanket had covered every inch of the top and back of her head. What remained was dry, brittle, and deathly white. Her face was terrible as well. Some of the gashes on her cheeks ran from her eyes to her chin and were so deep in places he could actually see her skull beneath. The gaping wound on her throat was possibly the most terrible. The entire front of her neck gaped open when she moved her hand away from it, and he wanted to gut whatever Frey bastard had done that to her and tear out the fiend’s entrails with his bare hands.

Her eyes continued to stare at him, an almost maniacal gleam in the challenge they held. But they were Catelyn’s eyes. She was damaged, likely beyond repair. He could see that. She wasn’t dead. Nor was she truly alive, and the truth of that ripped his own heart into very small pieces. But whatever else she was or wasn’t, she remained his Catelyn. “To me,” he repeated softly, looking into those eyes, “you are. Always.”

He opened his arms, and she threw herself into them, sobbing. He closed his arms around her tightly and held her against him, wishing he could make everything all right by doing so and knowing that he couldn’t. Strands of dry, brittle hair broke off and drifted away on the night breeze as he moved his fingers through her hair, but he imagined soft waves of bright auburn and did not stop.

How long they stood like that, he didn’t know, but she was the one who finally pulled away and looked up at him once more, grabbing at her throat. “I can’t,” she croaked. “Live.”

 _She cannot live,_ he thought desolately. She was telling him what he already knew. He wondered miserably if she could die. As much as he hated himself for the thought, he knew he would prefer death to this half existence in which she had been imprisoned. He could not fault her if she felt the same. He could not let her go, either.

“I will not leave you,” he insisted.

“You. Live.”

“Catelyn . . .”

“Not . . .” she said sadly.

Before he could contradict her, she put her hand against his mouth gently, a gesture she had used often enough through years of old arguments, and he found himself smiling at her in spite of his broken heart.

“Not,” she repeated. “Not. Stone.”

Puzzled, he looked at her, and she picked up his hand and held it against her chest. “You,” she said. “Ned.”

“Oh,” he whispered. Then he took her hand and laid it on his own chest. “You are my heart, too, Cat. Always.”

“Keep. Me. There.”

Starks didn’t cry. Ned could count upon one hand the times he remembered actually crying, and he’d know nothing but grief for more than a year now. Yet, he felt the moisture in his eyes and did not try to stop it. “Always,” he said.

“Grr . .” she choked and then shook her head in frustration, holding the papery flesh of her neck so tightly he feared she would tear it. “Grrrlssss”

“Sansa and Arya!” he cried. “Our girls.”

She nodded. “Find. Live.”

“I will find our daughters, Cat. If they live, I will find them and bring them to you.”

Now she looked distressed. “No!” she hissed vehemently. “Here.” She poked him hard in the chest again, and he understood. She wanted him to live. She wanted him to remember her. She wanted him to find their daughters. But she never wanted their daughters to see her like this.

As he looked down at her, it struck him suddenly that he only saw Cat now. He had to remind himself of her scars and white hair and corpse flesh. He wondered if she had truly lost herself because of her unholy resurrection or because she had simply become what she saw reflected in the eyes of those who looked at her. He looked deeply into her eyes now and willed her to see only herself in his eyes--only his beautiful Cat.

“I will find them,” he said softly, and he said nothing else.

“Love. You.”

“And I you, my lady. Always.”

She lay her head back down upon his chest then, and they stood there with their arms around each other until the sky grew light. That is how Thoros, Lem, Harwin, and several other men found them. 

At the men’s arrival, he saw something harden in her face. “Go,” she hissed at him.

He nodded. He wanted to kiss her. To have some form of farewell, but it was obvious she would not allow it. “I will find our daughters, and I will keep them safe,” he whispered, and only the barest nod of her head indicated she had heard him.

He allowed the men to lead him away to the entrance of the cave where a blindfold awaited him. She followed silently, keeping herself slightly apart from everyone, forever Lady Stoneheart to her men. Just before Harwin almost apologetically covered his eyes with the cloth, he looked at her, and she put her hand over her heart. He smiled at her even as he felt his heart breaking over and over. _I am her heart. And to me, she is always Catelyn._

He knew she did not mean to see him again in this world. 

He rode hard to catch up with Lady Brienne and her companions. He wanted to hear more of her promise to Catelyn. He wanted to hear what she had found thus far about his daughters. Perhaps they could work together to find them. He had a fleeting moment of regret that he was riding away from the Twins rather than toward it, but his girls were more important than vengeance. And he had promised Catelyn.

Brienne of Tarth proved surprisingly agreeable to riding with him in his quest to recover his daughters, and he found that he enjoyed the odd woman’s company. He had never known anyone like her, and he often could not begin to understand her, but she was brave and honorable and loved his wife almost as much as he did.

They were in the Vale, having discovered Sansa hidden away at the Gates of the Moon, when word came of the great fire at the Twins. The mysterious outlaw woman known as Lady Stoneheart and her men had somehow started it, and then remained until their own deaths at all the exits to ensure that the Freys could not escape, willing to perish themselves in order to finally bring down the architects of the Red Wedding.

Ned had gone off by himself after reading the letter which brought that news, standing outside in the cold and snow which never truly bothered him much. Lady Stoneheart was gone. She’d gotten her vengeance and now it would seem she had gotten her rest.

Catelyn was where she had always been, where she had asked him to keep her--inside his heart. Always. He allowed the tears to fall silently down his face, nearly freezing in his beard as he opened that heart and let himself truly feel her there. He looked up to see his daughter coming to find him, the daughter that, in spite of the darkened hair, had grown to look more like her mother than ever before. _I will protect her,_ he promised silently. _I will find Arya. I will live. And when at last it is my turn to rest, when I have lived too long, I will find you, my love. For I know you are waiting._


End file.
